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The tough and gritty Cincinnati Bearcats put up some stiff resistance early, but in the end they met the same fate as Kentucky’s previous 35 opponents this season.
Top-seeded Kentucky improved to 36-0 on the season and rolled into the Sweet 16 with a 64-51 victory over the No. 8 Bearcats at Louisville’s KFC Yum! Center before a huge pro-Cats crowd.
“There’s so much more — I know, right?” freshman star Karl-Anthony Towns of Piscataway, N.J., said according to The Sporting News. “And that’s the thing. We talked about that after the game. We said we could do something even more special. Coach Cal even told us: ‘You know the best thing about this team? We can rewrite history.’
“We’ve written history, and now we can rewrite it again. We can just keep using the eraser.”
Kentucky will meet the West Virginia-Maryland winner in the Sweet 16 on Thursday in Cleveland.
“The parity and the balance and all the other stuff in college basketball makes this ridiculous,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said. “And you have guys like Tyler [Ulis] who don’t realize what they’re doing because they’re so young, they’re 18- and 19-year-olds.”
Aaron Harrison led Kentucky with 13 points, Trey Lyles had 11 points, 11 rebounds and 2 blocks and Towns tallied 8 points and 7 rebounds.
Willie Cauley-Stein scored 9 points, but two came on this tremendous dunk on Linden (N.J.) High product Quadri Moore late in the first half.
Moore was whistled for a foul on the play, and it facilitated a 10-0 Kentucky run that led to a 31-24 halftime lead.
“I don’t think they put the dude back in the game,” Cauley-Stein told Kyle Tucker of the Louisville Courier-Journal. “It was nasty.”
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